\subsection*{Ethical Taboos: A Line in the Sand}
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\quot{``I'd do that for a dollar... that I would do for a hundred dollars... that I would not do.''}

\desc{Every person has a set of personal ethics that govern and proscribe how they behave. It is important to distinguish a person's ethics (what they personally will not do) from their ideology (what they personally want to get done). For example: many people want sewage to get treated, but very few people are willing to actually handle the sewage or be around the sewage processing themselves. These kinds of internal contradictions are practically universal and make for great character conflicts and growth possibilities.}

\noindent{But Ethical Taboos aren't purely debilitating, no matter what Nietzsche tells you. In a world with genuine mind control floating around, having arbitrary, even irrational lines that you won't cross can be extremely useful. After all, whatever things you don't want to do are things that you've spent much of your life figuring out how to live \emph{without doing}, and creatures trying to puppet you around may have no idea what those are, effectively creating minefields of unexpected resistance. Game mechanically, a character whose ethical taboos are brought to the fore increases the threshold to influence them in a course of action by 1 or 2.}

\newcommand{\taboo}[3]{\subsubsection*{#1}\vspace{-6pt}\quot{#2}

\noindent{#3}}

\taboo{Princess Ethics}
{``That's horrible and I don't want to look at it.''}
{Many people do not want to look at or participate in things that are ugly or repellent. While they probably have no moral objections to trash being collected, they have an \emph{ethical} prohibition against doing it themselves. While perhaps not especially praiseworthy according to most ethical calculi, Princess Ethics are reasonably common. The moral of [u]Beauty and the Beast[/u], [u]The Frog Prince[/u], and [u]Cinderella[/u] are pretty much all that Princess Ethics is to one degree or another bad; but that should not tell you that Princess Ethics are universally thought poorly of in any society. Indeed, many societies frown on people who abandon Princess Ethics, or even \emph{seem} to. Just the fact that ``Untouchables'' exist in many cultures should tell you how prevalent this line of thinking really is.}

\taboo{Nonviolence Ethics}
{``I can't do that, people could get hurt!''}
{Nonviolence is when \emph{you} don't hurt or kill things by \emph{your} actions in a direct way that \emph{you} can see. This is very often quite a different concern from taking actions that reduce the overall amount of hurt in the world, or even reducing the amount of violence in their area or even reducing the amount of violence done on their personal behalf. For example, while a person with Nonviolence Ethics will not swing a hammer into the skull of a pig, they are often perfectly happy to eat a eurodog. A severe conflict for the follower of Nonviolence Ethics is being attacked, since of course most people want to survive.}

\taboo{Politeness Ethics}
{``Of course I don't hate you...''}
{Mankind, even supernatural kind continues to persist in no small part because of its ability to get along with itself. And one of the strongest forces making this possible is the capacity for politeness. Each person is expected to defer actions that might offend others. And a lot of people do this pragmatically, not wanting to potentially start shit with random strangers. And a lot of other people find this automatic restriction on their activities is truly part of their being. Insulting others or taking a dump on the table is something they \emph{won't} do.}

\taboo{Privacy Ethics}
{``What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.''}
{The world's panopticon is fairly advanced, with more information collected on each person than any other person could read in a lifetime even if they could find it all in the stacks and stacks of documentation tangled up in other people's lives. And yet, a lot of people don't want to share things about themselves with others. This isn't exactly the same thing as shame, and indeed many people who feel this way are not particularly embarrassed about most of their actions, but simply feel that others knowing about them and especially \emph{finding things out} about them is an insidious attack. Characters with Privacy Ethics won't talk about their personal life except under the most extreme duress.}

\taboo{Frugality Ethics}
{I've got food at home. That hotdog guy is not getting my dollar.}
{The very nature of expending things is that once that has been done, the thing is expended. This finality is a source of genuine fear for a lot of people. The idea of not being able to use something later can be virtually paralyzing. People with Frugality Ethics are opposed to giving up things, even though by \emph{never} using an opportunity or good it is in fact \emph{very similar} to never having had it at all.}

\taboo{Hacker Ethics}
{I may not like what you say, but I'd be modestly upset if someone stopped you from saying it.}
{People who have Hacker Ethics don't like being told to shut up and they don't like getting rid of DVDs that they haven't watched yet. In a larger sense, they feel that \emph{information} has a life of its own and should be enabled whenever possible. Hacker Ethics provokes people to have a gut reaction of horror to censorship, even if the ideas being censored are ones they are violently opposed too.}